This is actually an interesting case - the previous version seemed more "wiki-like" to me (explaining what Excel is - in case people don't know...) while yours improves usability of the site (explains how to use the actual tag) at the expense of explaining what Excel is a single paragraph. You could argue that this is another small issue to consider regarding the design of the whole tag wiki feature.
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MonoloMay 13 '14 at 10:37

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I also took the liberty to fix a small typo (1 char) - provided it is a typo - English is not my mother tongue. Let's see how that goes.
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MonoloMay 13 '14 at 10:41

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IMO your first edit should've been rejected. Excerpts are supposed to actually tell you what the tag is about not just be a massive disclaimer. Although feel free to put a disclaimer at the end. Disclaimers don't really seem to help though - people misusing tags or asking on the wrong site seem to rarely bother reading tags anyway.
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DukelingMay 13 '14 at 15:29

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@Dukeling well, I thought differently so did JeffAvoid generically defining the concept behind a tag, unless it is highly specialized. The “email” tag, for example, does not need to explain what email is. I think we can safely assume most internet users know what email is; there’s no value in a boilerplate explanation of email to anyone.
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MeehowMay 13 '14 at 15:53

if you follow a tag you know what it means. If you want to use a tag you want to see when and how to use it and not necessarily the entire history of the concept it represents...
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MeehowMay 13 '14 at 16:06

@mehow "so did Jeff"... sure but funnily enough I saw that Joel was one of the early editors of the original.
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Richard Le MesurierMay 13 '14 at 16:17

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@mehow: It should tell what the email tag is about, not necessarily what email is. This tag wiki could be applied with little modification to any tag. "Use the [email/function/http/android/php] tag only for questions which involve programming directly. If you seek general help..." Also, the first sentence seems to imply that it's the tag that's specific to programming questions, not the whole StackOverflow site.
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user2357112May 14 '14 at 6:52

The excel tag don't need to explain what excel is. Everybody knows that. But this isn't true for every tag. It's nice that e.g. tags for some libraries explain in short what's the library for, and as long as those tags don't get misused, it's fine IMHO.
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slothMay 14 '14 at 7:18

2 Answers
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I'd argue that the edit of @me how would have been good and should be applied. According to the tag wiki guidelines:

Avoid generically defining the concept behind a tag, unless it is highly specialized. The “email” tag, for example, does not need to explain what email is. I think we can safely assume most internet users know what email is; there’s no value in a boilerplate explanation of email to anyone.

I think this also holds for the excel in question. We're a site for programming Q&A, we can safely assume that most users know about what excel is.

Concentrate on what a tag means to your community. For “email” on Server Fault, mention the server aspects of email including POP3, SMTP, IMAP, and server software. For “email” on Super User, mention desktop email clients and explicitly exclude webmail, as that would be more appropriate for webapps.stackexchange.com.

This now is exactly what OP wanted to achieve with his edit, make clear that the tag is about programming excel and even points out on which other sites other excel questions might be ok for.

Provide basic guidance on when to use the tag. In other words, what kinds of questions should have this tag? Tags only exist as ways of organizing questions, so if we don’t provide proper guidance on which questions need this tag, they won’t get tagged at all, rendering the tag excerpt moot. Think of it as a sales pitch: in a room full of tags screaming “pick me!”, what would convince a question asker to select your tag?

That's what the original tag completely misses in my opinion, it explains what excel is even though it's common knowledge and that it can be combined with some other tags, but doesn't give any real guidance on when to use the tag.

Some tags are common knowledge. Most tags require a bit of explanation in the excerpt, even if it’s only 3 or 4 words. But if the tag is common knowledge — that is, if you walked up to any random person on the street and said the tag word to them, and they would know what you were talking about — then don’t bother explaining the tag at all. Stick to usage of the tag within your community in the excerpt.

This quote is similar but stronger than the first quote. But I'd argue that even this holds true for excel. And even if the random person on the street wouldn't know what excel is (they most likely would, but lets just assume), I see this more as a general advice considering there are SE sites about many different topics. And in my opinion it's reasonable to just assume for the programming related sites that this is the case and the excel tag wouldn't need any explanation about what excel is at all and could be completely about the usage of the tag.

Now lets have a look at the current tag excerpt:

Microsoft Excel is a commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. If your question is about programming Excel in VBA then also tag it "excel-vba". If it is about an Excel formula or worksheet function, then also tag it "worksheet-function". If your question is about using Excel then it is almost certainly off-topic for Stack Overflow (see the Help Center for more info).

It gives an in my opinion superfluous explanation of what excel is (that's something for the longer tag wiki in this case). And tells us a bit about when to combine it with other tags and that most questions about excel alone would be offtopic. **So when exactly should I use this tag alone? It isn't really answered in this version (you can assume it given that stackoverflow is about programming but), why not give more information about the actual usage of it instead of the explanation.

And now lets look at the suggestion:

Use the Excel tag only for questions which involve programming directly. If you seek general help regarding Microsoft Excel which is not about programming than consider asking your question on another SE site: SuperUser.com. It's OK to combine the Excel tag with VSTO, C#, VB.NET, OLE automation, and other programming related tags and questions.

This leaves out all the explanation of excel itself, which given that it's common knowledge isn't bad at all. It explicitly states the usage case for the tag. It leads you to another site if your question doesn't fit the tag usage here and lists common tags that are used together with this tag. It got everything it needs in my opinion.

I agree with the comments above - your changes mean the excerpt no longer explains what "excel" means and instead focuses only on telling people how to use the tag.

I've edited the tag back to near its original form, so it reads as follows:

Microsoft Excel is a commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. If your question is about programming Excel in VBA then also tag it "excel-vba". If it is about an Excel formula or worksheet function, then also tag it "worksheet-function". If your question is about using Excel then it is almost certainly off-topic for Stack Overflow (see the Help Center for more info).

right so now only if I was 20K i would go back and edit it to how I wanted it...Excel is self-explanatory. If you don't know what Excel means and you are on a programming-related site you don't deserve to have a computer. The point of having this tag on this site is to tell people how to use it on site not what Excel is. Being super active in Excel and VBA, trust me people misuse it too much cuz we get general "HELP ME IN EXCEL" questions which are non-programming and shouldn't be asked here instead SuperUser.
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MeehowMay 13 '14 at 15:45

@mehow Yes, most people will know what Excel is, but we still have to tell them. Same as why the java tag tells you what Java is. It is certainly acceptable to include some tag usage advice, but it cannot be the sole content of the excerpt. And trust me, the people who can't figure out SO is not the place for Excel questions are not the people who read tag excerpts particularly closely :-)
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DuncanMay 13 '14 at 15:48

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@Duncan your version doesn't mention anything about vsto, c#, ole automation, automation in general which is mainly where Excel tag should be used.
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MeehowMay 13 '14 at 15:50

@Duncan And trust me, the people who can't figure out SO is not the place for Excel questions are not the people who read tag excerpts particularly closely I completely agree. The point here was also to demonstrate to people answering the poor Excel questions that the tag is to be used for programmatic questions and not conditional formatting in excel or how to bold text...
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MeehowMay 13 '14 at 15:51

@mehow The body of the wiki page might be a better place for your other tag advice (C#, VSTO etc.). Perhaps suggest an edit there?
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DuncanMay 13 '14 at 15:53

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I find it interesting that a 20k user (Duncan) rolled back a change made by a 242k (MartijnPieters) user. My understanding of this meta site was that the higher rep users normally called the shots around here.
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Richard Le MesurierMay 13 '14 at 15:56

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@RichardLeMesurier that's what I said in the first comment. Once I am over 20K+ i can just go around editing things to my own preference...but this is a bit of a different issue it probably deserves its own post.
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MeehowMay 13 '14 at 15:57

@mehow yes, until at some point one of the big guys will squash you ;-)
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Richard Le MesurierMay 13 '14 at 15:59

@RichardLeMesurier Above 20k, you are trusted to make these changes. The consensus, from the flurry of comments beneath the question, lay in my favour. Although the recent links posted by mehow are very interesting.
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DuncanMay 13 '14 at 15:59

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People do not need to be told what excel is, the first sentence that you re-added is noise. The other sentences in the original were probably worthwhile, but so were some of the suggested edit's; a compromise between old and new, at least, is more appropriate than a complete rollback.
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roippiMay 13 '14 at 16:13

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On further reflection, I'm still happy with this edit. The excerpt on briefly describes what excel is. A sentence is not unreasonable, just to distinguish against other possible meanings of the word. My edit contains most of the original text plus a nod to mihow's edit in the final sentence.
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DuncanMay 13 '14 at 17:13

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+1 for last comment - to me the value of this meta is that we can all hold our opinions with pride. In this way it is very different from SO, and quite democratic.
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Richard Le MesurierMay 13 '14 at 17:40

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@Duncan I wanna note that I don't buy your Java example. Java is a programming language, it naturally got most of it's questions programming related and on topic for the language tag. But for excel you don't just have the programming aspect of excel but also a major part of other excel usage as spreadsheet program. They don't really relate in my opinion.
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Raphael MiedlMay 13 '14 at 21:24